Amalgamations, Service Realignment, And Property Taxes: Did the Harris Government have a Plan for Ontario's Municipalities‪?‬

Drastic change was contemplated by The Common Sense Revolution (CSR), the election manifesto that brought Mike Harris to power as premier of Ontario in 1995; the Harris government implemented drastic change; therefore the CSR explains what the Harris government has done. The fact that this syllogism is logically flawed should be obvious. The aim of this paper, however, is to go beyond formal logic and show that, with respect to the Harris-government's municipal policies, its substance is flawed as well. Although Harris has brought dramatic change to Ontario municipalities, such change was not the result of the CSR. On municipal issues, the CSR was too vague to account for any of the policies subsequently implemented. The CSR promised only that "any actions we take will not result in increases to local property taxes; that "regional and municipal levels" of government should be "rationalize[d] ... to avoid overlap and duplication that now exists"; and that "we will sit down with municipalities to discuss ways of reducing government entanglement and bureaucracy with an eye to eliminating waste and duplication as well as unfair downloading by the province" (Progressive Party of Ontario 1994). At great political cost, the government launched a massive campaign in late 1995 to promote municipal amalgamation outside Metropolitan Toronto and in 1997 to compel it within, all the while leaving politically unpopular regional governments untouched (until late 1999 at least). In 1997 it also realigned provincial and municipal taxation and service responsibilities in such a way as to make the system more confused and entangled than ever before. Finally, it adopted a new property-tax assessment system, effective in 1998, that will lead to dramatic tax increases for many of its strongest supporters. How did it arrive at this remarkable series of outcomes?